Dog process speech in the same way as human brains do, study finds - Daily Mail

Despite not being able to talk, dogs process speech in the same way as humans do, according to a new study.

Both dogs and human brains separately process the intonation – how a voice rises and falls – and the meaning of the words spoken. .

They found dogs process intonation mostly in the brain's lower subcortical regions, and recognised the actual meaning of words in cortical regions, like humans. .

During speech processing, dogs and human listeners can separately analyse lexical and intonational cues to interpret vocalisations.

'Exploring speech processing similarities and differences between dog and human brains can help a lot in understanding the steps that led to the emergence of speech during evolution,' said study author Anna Gábor at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. .

'Some years ago, we discovered that dog brains, just as human brains, separate intonation and word meaning – but is the hierarchy also similar? .

The research team previously found that dogs separately analyse lexical and intonational cues to decipher meaning.

Hungarian researchers measured the awake, cooperative dogs' brain activity via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). .

The results show that dog brains, just like human brains, process speech hierarchically – intonation at lower stages, mostly in subcortical regions, while known words are processed at higher stages, in cortical regions.  

Repeating the same intonation led to activity decreases, mostly in ancient subcortical brain regions. 

Simpler, emotionally loaded cues, such as intonation, are typically analysed at lower stages, while more complex, learnt cues, such as word meaning, are analysed at higher stages in multiple species, including humans. 

'Instead, the hierarchy following intonation and word meaning processing reported here and also in humans may reflect a more general, not speech-specific processing principle.  

'What our results really shed light on is that human speech processing may also follow this more basic, more general hierarchy.'    

Doggy methods to separately analyse and integrate word meaning and intonation suggest that this capacity can evolve in the absence of language, the team said.